Honey Bees Fight Terrorism

Researchers at the Ohio State Bee lab announced they have found a new tool to fight terrorism, the honey bee.

In 2005, scientists from the University of Montana, Montana State University and The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration conducted successful tests showing that the honey bee could be trained to find landmines. By feeding the bees sugar water containing traces of the explosive, the bees will hunt out the land mines by smell and the bees can be tracked with Lidar. These amazing insects only miss their target less than 1% of the time.

Now researches from Ohio State have found a way to use this same mechanism to hunt out terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere. They have found that they can train the honey bees to seek out humans by body oder. In addition, by using the more aggressive Africanized honey bee, who’s defense response can be triggered by CO2 in our breath, the bees will actively seek out and sting their target. While this may only serve to be a minor annoyance to the terrorists, researchers are working on potent sedatives that can be fed to the bees that won’t affect the bees but will find it’s way into the bees venom. While the bees do die when they sting, they are relatively inexpensive and it is simple to train new bees.

"The goal is not to harm anyone, but to incapacitate them so troops may move in safely. This could revolutionize how suspects are apprehended up and virtually eliminate hazards to our troops or civilians. It’s a very promising technology and we’ve had interest from the FBI and several other state law enforcement agencies hoping to use it."